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Or a Spotify that operated in the way Discogs does.
You could open, say, Future's DS2 and download that album as a FLAC, 320kb/s, V0, 256kb/s, or V2 file. You could download it Mastered for iTunes, CD, WEB, CD Deluxe or WEB Deluxe. Or, you already owned the album, and you were just looking for comments about it. But then you see the producers tab, and it lists Metro, Southside, Zaytoven, et al. You could click Zaytoven and see every available torrent that his production had been tagged on. OR you could see the Freebandz and Epic Records tags and go see what was in the database from them.
That was one use for it. The other would be, and this was how my friend used it, you're in love with '80s Japanese culture. Tracking down all the animes, buying the LPs and cassettes and CDs when they pop up, but there is always more, a lot of printed in 500 print runs or less, most of relegated to Japan only. You become a huge fan of Junichi Inagaki in particular. There was a web matrix at the bottom of each artist's page connecting you to both projects that artist participated in and artists who were similar to them whether that was tied to genre, label, era, what have you. If you had extremely specific interest, what.cd didn't just connect you to that interest, it gave you the means to explore them to the furthest extent possible.
Let's say you're not into esoteric adventures, though. You just fucking LOVE The Beatles (I'm using this example because they're the artist of this variety I'm most familiar with; Prince, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, et al apply as well). You've owned a CD of Abbey Road for years, and you've noticed in the liner notes its the 1987, stereo remaster. You've worn that release out, you have a good stereo system, and you realize you've never really heard the album as it was originally released to the public, mono, on vinyl, as two continuous sides of music.
What.CD would whittle that release down to UK, US, Japan, 24K, etc. etc. etc. et fucking cetera through to whenever that album was last re-released, and the users often noted what made it different in the liner notes. If you were a geek for a particularly popular record that artists, engineers and labels had futzed with over a span of decades, all that was at your finger tips.
For a more current example, all the versions of The Life of Pablo were date-marked, available in FLAC, 320, V0 and V2, with extensive notes on what made each version different from lyrics to down-to-the-second musical changes.
Yes, it was "piracy", but that's an absurd simplifcation of the service it provided people who were passionate about the music they listened to.
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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz
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The Lesson
at OKP today is lame central supreme, like *literally* a gadering of cunts, just chase me away so I don't even *want* to come 'ere anymore, please!!!!!!!
